The Ship and the Parachute
by Seven Perseids
Summary: One-shot from Ralph's perspective: As they leave the island in flaming ruins, they delve headlong into a world of bombs, hatred, and malice that's only masquerading as something better.


The Ship and the Parachute  
  
* * * * * *  
  
Ralph watched dumbly as the flaming ruins of the island shrank behind the stern of the cutter. It moved up and down as the cutter rose and sank on the undulating swells of glittering turquoise seawater, its rocky peak swinging to and fro like an upturned pendulum. Great flickering tongues of fire were visible above the treetops on one side, where the platform had been. The pink slab of granite was no longer in sight because it was either obscured by the flames or charred beyond recognition; the eye could not tell which. Gargantuan black plumes of smoke billowed up from the jungle canopy and Ralph imagined creepers and ferns and trees, all burning, all snapping, popping, belching soot.   
  
—You wanted a fire. You got a fire.   
  
—They were hunting you. Like a pig. Cut your throat. Spill your blood. Bash you in.   
  
Ralph wiped the tears off his face with a filthy hand. There was blood and sweat and dirt smeared over the skin and scratches and scrapes that stung. He wanted to wash them, but the seawater was too familiar. Soap. That was what he needed. Fresh water and soap.   
  
"Crackers." Samneric were sitting beside him.   
  
"Wacco." Eric rubbed his nose.   
  
"Nutters." Sam rubbed his nose too.   
  
"They couldn't keep a bloody fire going," Ralph said. His voice was expressionless, but he was still sniffling. "They couldn't keep a bloody fire going but they could burn down the island."  
  
Samneric began jabbering.   
  
"But you know—"  
  
"We couldn't stop them—"  
  
"Jack was real mad—"  
  
Ralph had been holding his tattered gray T-shirt in his lap, but now he threw it down. The puddle of seawater that had collected in the bottom of the cutter splashed and sprayed his face with brine, stinging the skin where it had been cut or burned.   
  
"It's all his fault," he said vehemently. "If Jack didn't—well—you know—" Suddenly his hand flew to his forehead and he clutched the mop of dirty blond hair that hung down over his eyes. He couldn't say it. One of the littluns began to whimper again, but Ralph ignored it.   
  
"M--m-my name is P-Percival Wemys M—Madison—"  
  
"Oh, shut up," Maurice mumbled. One of the naval officers in their boat patted Percival on the head.   
  
"We'll get you home, lad. Don't you worry."   
  
Percival continued jibbering for a minute: "...Of the V-Vicarage...Harcourt St. An-nthony..." He broke off and began crying again, dissolving into high-pitched sobs. Ralph watched him numbly. The naval officer was attempting to comfort Percival:  
  
"Now, now, son. You'll be home in a jiffy. We'll get you all washed up and good as new when we get to the ship. How does that sound? Eh? And a nice tumbler of chocolate?"  
  
Ralph worked his fists. Good as new. The naval officer would never understand. Simon was dead, Piggy was dead. And what about the boy with the mulberry-colored birthmark? All of them were dead. The beast had gotten them.   
  
—A stick sharpened at both ends. Pig's head, an offering to the beast. And Jack and Roger were going to...  
  
Ralph shuddered. The island was moving up and down and the plume of smoke was billowing across the sky in great clouds of dark, opaque gray. High above and all around was the clear blue dome, drenched in the light of the burning gold orb. Far away the sun was setting on England; Ralph looked up and knew that the light would soon shift and illuminate the lagoon by the place of assembly from below instead of above. Their faces would have different shadows on them in a short while, and the ferns and creepers would dapple the granite at shallow angles...and then someone would notice the shadows and pretend to tell ghost stories, causing the group to giggle nervously until he lifted the conch for silence...  
  
A shadow came over them, and Samneric breathed aloud.   
  
"Wow."  
  
"Wizard."  
  
"Wham-o."  
  
Ralph looked up at the twins. Their eyes were wide, their mouths hanging slightly open in awe, two identical pictures of amazement and the unspeaking majority. The littluns in the boat were also staring up at the hulking mass of the ship that rested like metallic royalty on the deep cerulean waves; it was a cruiser, a beautiful war machine. Its keel and hull glistened a cold gray in the rhythmic splashing of seawater. Ralph blinked, rubbed his eyes, and saw the other cutter bob up beside them. The bony face of Jack Merridew stood out against the others, for he was the only one whose face was no longer painted. One of the adults in his boat had scrubbed most of the gunk off him with his handkerchief and was now working on Bill, whistling as he went.   
  
"Lordy," Ralph heard the man say, "You boys were really going at it, huh? Masquerading and everything. Must've been some party."  
  
The words didn't fit in Ralph's brain, and he turned away, feeling sick.   
  
"Here we are," the naval officer said jauntily. "We'll be on deck in no more than a minute or two."  
  
Ralph didn't know what to say. An aloof sort of disbelief was coursing through him. The water was reflecting dancing patterns on the ship's steel exterior and men leaning over the bulwarks were throwing down ropes from above; the naval officer set to work rigging the cutter to be hoisted aboard. And then they were being lifted away from the sea, the slosh and sweep of the waves sucking momentarily to fill in the vacuum. Then the cutter jolted, and they were free. 

The sea was dark when Ralph next looked at it. A brilliant silver moon hung suspended in the sky like a great Cyclopes eye, unblinking, and bright jewels scintillated on the surface of moving black water, flickering white creatures, little glimmers and snakes of light that diffused downwards from the heavens. The ship rolled slowly over them, up, down, pitch, yaw, and Ralph leaned wearily against the bulwark, resting his chin on his arms. He could still smell the blood and dirt and salt on himself even though he had washed most of it off belowdecks; when the breeze blew his hair into his face he could still smell the ash. He shuddered and shoved it aside.   
  
He was in limbo: one moment he wanted to think, and the next moment he did not want to think at all. Thinking would bring the curtain in his brain down again. But the curtain didn't matter anymore, did it? When did anything matter?   
  
Well, it always mattered. And it mattered because—because—  
  
Ralph clenched his fist and pounded once on the bulwark. Things were always breaking up. Nobody on the island had been able to get anything done, nobody'd followed the rules. And it was all because things were breaking up. A stick sharpened at both ends.   
  
—What have you been doing? Having a war or something?  
  
Ralph began to laugh. A stick sharpened at both ends. Ha-ha-ha. He laughed harder.   
  
Suddenly someone kicked the bulwark, and he lurched back. The person worked his fists. "You're loony," he spat. "This is all your fault—now we've got to go back to that dumb, prissy, pretty-boy place—"  
  
"What, you didn't want to get rescued?" Ralph said, still laughing. He was looking into the ghostly face of Jack Merridew. "You didn't want to get on a ship and go home?"  
  
"This is all your fault," Jack repeated savagely, grabbing him round the shoulders. Ralph couldn't breathe; he was convulsing. From somewhere outside his head he saw Roger standing behind Jack, sulking and contemptuous. "Everybody hates you—"  
  
"How do you know? You don't think—you never did anything but kill pigs—"  
  
"We needed meat! I gave you food!" Jack was shaking him now, and Ralph felt his brains rattle. "You did nothing but order people around and talk about Piggy—Piggy! Piggy! Piggy! It was always Piggy—"  
  
Suddenly Ralph's fist shot out and hit Jack squarely across the jaw, the knuckles cracking as they crashed into the bone. Jack recoiled, touching his lip. Blood began trickling from the wound, and Ralph gasped feverishly, "You shut up. You and him--" he jabbed his finger at Roger— "You're both murderers. What you did. That was murder. Piggy never did anything, and neither did Simon. You and your bloody hunters—dancing, acting like kids—like animals—always scaring the littluns with your talk about the beast—"  
  
"We were going to hunt and kill the beast!" Jack yelled furiously. "Me and my hunters, we were going to get rid of it. But you always got in the way—"   
  
"All I wanted was a fire! And you fools couldn't do it! You couldn't gather your wits long enough to know fire was all we had— " He broke off, unable to speak. Anger was surging up in him like a tide. He wanted to put his hands around Jack's throat and squeeze the life out of him, feel the power of the final hunt, eradicate, destroy.   
  
...No. You're not like them. This is a ship, not the island. You don't need to hurt them in any case. You're better than that.   
  
"Fire," Ralph said at last, taking a deep breath. "Fire was all we had, and now it's over. You know that. We're going home, and the island is history. Got that?"  
  
Jack was silent for a moment. But then he leaned forward, made like he was going to throw a punch, and then simply spit in Ralph's face. Some of it caught him in the eye; most of it landed on his cheek. Blinking, Ralph wiped the spittle away with the back of his hand and shoved Jack by the shoulder. "Get out of here," he said. "We don't need you. Get out of here."  
  
There was another silence as the two boys stared at each other, one in hatred and the other in final decisiveness; from the outside it was impossible to tell which expression was associated with whom, though it was impossible to tell from the inside as well. But then Jack whirled suddenly on his heel, and without looking back, he strode away. Roger followed silently, for his step was quieter, more insidious than Jack's. Ralph watched them until they disappeared into the shadows belowdecks, and then he turned back to the sea. He rubbed his knuckles where they had struck Jack's jaw and found that they were bleeding.   
  
Suddenly the sounds of guns erupted in the sky, a roar of plane engines. The air cracked and splintered and a flash of orange light went off overhead. A second later the thunder of an explosion came rolling through the night, and Ralph looked up to see glowing embers speeding towards the surface of the ocean; then the dark figure of a pilot and his parachute flowered into existence below the blazing cloud of smoke and vermilion.   
  


  
"Oy! Look there!"   
  
The naval officer put his binoculars to his eyes immediately. A lieutenant and a sailor on this watch were leaning against the railing. Their heads were tilted skywards, necks craned towards the glowing nebula that had been an aircraft less than twenty seconds ago. Through the binoculars he could see the pilot clutching at the strings of his parachute, could see the British insignia, the helmet, the goggles, the wrinkled flight suit. Stars glittered coldly in the background and made white streaks as the binoculars moved erratically with the roll of the ship and the shaking of the officer's hands. The pilot was writhing in his constraints; he made unintelligible gestures, cupped his hands around his mouth--the officer knew he was shouting at them to pick him up.   
  
"Lieutenant!" he barked. "That's one of our boys out there. Get a few hands up here; we're going to have to fish him out."  
  
"Yes, sir!" The lieutenant jogged away and went belowdecks, and in a rattle of metal stairways and a pounding of boots, there were a dozen men by the railing. 

  
  
Ralph watched all this from a distance of several dozen yards down the deck. After a short while the silhouette of the pilot and his parachute disappeared and splashed into the ocean; at this the naval officer shouted orders to get to the helm and steer the ship closer. Get some lifeline out there, he said. Get a line and we'll bring the man aboard.   
  
Ralph leaned further over the bulwark. There was something familiar about the way the parachute puffed up on the surface of the sea when the wind touched it; there was something chilling about the way it seemed to rise and fall with the swells. Ralph shivered, felt sick again. And Lord, was he tired--tired, but unable to sleep. The curtain would keep rising and falling--there was no way he'd be able to rest, for there were so many souvenirs of the breakdown on this ship; littluns getting lost in the corridors, biguns trying to scare them. The beast had followed them, some said.  
  
—Of course the beast followed us, you idiots. You were the beast—we were the beast. It's just like Simon said. It was us all along.   
  
Someone was yelling; the voice was thin and ragged, strained by open air and sea. "Over here! Over here, lads—" And it was broken up by fits of coughing and sputtering that Ralph sensed rather than heard. "Look to your bloody left!"  
  
Sailors and officers were clattering about the railing, all leaning over; someone threw a life preserver into the water and began cranking the wheel. Slack rope whipped over the bulwark and snaked downwards into the glittering waves. Traces of orange, yellow, red, and white danced over the black surface, seeming to rise up from an inferno that blazed below.   
  
The commotion continued like this for some time, but Ralph lost track of it. The parachute kept sloshing back and forth in the water like a sluggish leviathan that had lost its will to kill or eat long ago and was now merely waiting for an opportunity to sleep; Ralph gave a twisted smile when the thought crossed his mind. Nothing like that ever truly slept.   
  
Suddenly there was a great splash of water onto the deck, and Ralph looked up. The pilot had just heaved himself over the railing. He was a tall, lean man, his uniform clinging to him and streaming seawater. He was working at the knot he'd tied in the rope the naval officer had thrown him, for he had fastened it around his waist. Somewhere out beyond the bow the parachute was still floating, abandoned in the inky suck and sweep...  
  
"Well, you picked a jolly time to drop in on us," the officer was saying. "We just picked up a whole island full of boys...they must've been there for at least three months, eh, Johnny?"  
  
Another man clicked his tongue. "Aye, sir. I'd be willing to bet on it. Scruffy lads, those kids. Looked like they'd been playing with matches in the mud for at least that long. And getting damn serious about it--pardon, sir."  
  
"Well, they'll be back home with their mothers in barely a week if we make good time. Then they can get all cleaned up and ready for the next evacuation so they can start all over again."  
  
Laughter among the sailors. Something in Ralph's chest twisted, and he began walking towards them. His footstep was unsteady in the constant roll and yaw of the ship.   
  
"Dunno, sir, you reckon there'll be another plane crash with those same kids in it?" someone said.   
  
"Hell if there isn't, eh? Keeps us in business even during peacetime." More laughter. Then: "All's well that ends well, I say..."  
  
Ralph stepped out of the shadows and found himself suddenly blinded by the lights at the bow of the ship. At least a dozen men were standing around the sodden pilot, all joking with one another as sailors are wont to do. A flat nimbus of seawater glistened around the pilot's feet and little rivulets of the transparent veneer slid back and forth across the nimbus with the unsteady pitching of the deck. One of the men put on a shocked face when he saw Ralph.   
  
"Oh-ho! Here's one of the survivors now--right tough young chap, no? What's your name?"   
  
Ralph couldn't speak for a moment; his voice had fled. He stared at the pilot in sudden disbelief. Sensing this, the pilot bowed.   
  
"21st Airborne Division of England at your service."  
  
That damned curtain was falling again. Something unintelligible made its way past Ralph's lips.   
  
"What was that, son?"  
  
Ralph stared again. There were a thousand things he wanted to say, a thousand words he couldn't find. The twisting in his chest grew more painful, and he wanted to sob and laugh and scream all at once if for nothing else than to relieve the pressure.   
  
At last he found his voice.   
  
"Er—were you shot down?" he faltered. "Like in a plane crash, I mean?..."  
  
"Shot right out of the sky," one of the sailors confirmed. "That right?"  
  
"Right enough. Didn't think I was going to get out with my skin in tact that time..."  
  
"That was a damn close call..."  
  
"I'll say. This war is taking too damn long if you ask me..."  
  
Suddenly Ralph was reminded of everything all over again: Jack, Roger, hunters--everybody dancing in a frenzy, hurling spears at the center, screaming--Kill the beast. Cut his throat. Spill his blood. Bash him in.   
  
—What have you been doing? Having a war or something?   
  
—Yes, yes. Shot right out of the sky. Having a war. Everybody's having wars. Simon and Piggy are dead. Everything breaks up in the end; somebody'll just take a stick and sharpen it at both ends. God, I want to go home. But what's home? Everybody's having wars.   
  
From somewhere outside his body Ralph heard himself begin to sob again, and he swayed, losing his balance. And the world went black behind the hot sting of tears, and a pair of arms reached out to catch him as he tried and failed to stagger away. 

  
* - ... - * - ... - * - ... - * - ... - * - ... - * - ... - * - ... - * - ... - * 

  
  
A/N: Alright, guys, I admit it. This was an English assignment. But I *did* try to mimic William Golding's prose style, and I *am* a Lord of the Flies fan. I wanted to continue with what I thought would be Golding's next statement on the nature of society, so I decided to try my hand at putting his symbolism to work. I'd write more if I felt the symbolism were more open-ended, but alas, I doubt it is. Sigh. The man was so sage...  
  
Cheers, everyone, and thanks for reading!   
  
~Zenith Meridian


End file.
